three borrowed thoughts

its so obvious and yet so deep. never seemed to realize it. cost-benefit analyses assume that the marginal utility from a unit of money is constant and the same for everyone involved in the study. which is kind of restrictive.

you would think a rich guy wouldn't care to earn a dollar and someone else may consider that very important.

and yet counter to this is Edgeworth's argument that a rich guy can enjoy an extra dollar more than a poor guy can. meaning a rich person because he has already satisfied his basic wants, can get more pleasure out of extra money where as someone who really needed that money will maybe not break even with it. so in that case, sensitivity of the rich to additional money is higher than that of the poor.

so, welfare considerations get confused. obviously

tell me i haven't changed you, and i would consider it my greatest success

"he was at once both too great and too small for love"

while in his stories he tries to decipher the mysteries of the nature of the characters he narrates to have known, i wonder about him. at some point i'm convinced that he detested women in a way, that he was contemptuous of them but then he surprises me toward the end of the tale by springing on me, this woman who is a contradiction to the most ubiquitous of womanly faults. and is yet, so whole a woman. was it that he never found the ideal that he was searching in woman? and therefore he was gay...?

the moon came and went unnoticed
and so will the sun again tomorrow
the clouds heavy in their heart
just hung there
and failed to share their sorrow

and now my blog becomes as accessible as chat. i'm sure that'll make the posts even increasingly tweet-like. and so update for the day - i'm hoping tonight-tom's snow will be the last of this winter. its been a thick-skinned winter not to take the hint and end its stay

they'd rather leave it as an imagined claim of right, than make what meat they can out of reality. what they sure do, is deserve each other

good old non-credible days

the world has changed so much. some non-credible threats have now become so credible. in a hijack-game in undergrad class today, the prof referred to the game as being played in pre 9/11 days. that one sentence held so much information for a game theory student. it made me smile, despite the underlying gloom in its meaning. there was a time in this world when killing oneself (with killing others) was considered an incredible threat, by theorists at least. even though the people threatened often took it seriously and thus obeyed. though this started to change in parts of the world even before 9/11, it was 9/11 that left no doubt about the credibility of such threats. since then, blowing oneself up in order to blow others, is no longer seen as having a negative payoff for the perpetrator of the threat. in fact, sometimes the suicide bomber may not need the excuse of his demand not being fulfilled to threaten to bomb. the bombing may in itself be an end result to him/her. and what's scary is that, in such situations, for reasons still bewildering and half unknown, there may in fact be a positive and dominant payoff to the bomber.

so the prof changed the payoffs to represent a present-day scenario for comparison. subgame perfect: bomb no matter what.

the be-nice-to-strangers is beyond me. how can she paste that smile on her face for so long while checking so many people out, and greet everyone with the same pleasantness. and then make small talk, "enjoying the sunshine? i'm loving every minute of it". how can she love the sunshine when she is indoors the entire day beeping objects and cards and smiling and saying, "thank you, have a great day". i guess its nice to be nice and to have people being nice to you. but did anyone wonder about the dipping curve of the marginal utility of niceness.

to the water people

"Mother always said that my sister Satsu was like wood. As rooted to the earth as a Sagura tree. But she told me I was like water. Water can carve its way, even through stone. And when trapped, water makes a new path."

anyone who loves delhi, will naturally find a friend in me. extra points if the love is over that for bombay. :) its a spiritual connect. delhi was not my home. it is my soul's space. somehow even as a teenager in bhutan i knew in my heart that i wanted to study in delhi and that i'd find my love in north campus. and even though i had hardly seen delhi then, it felt like my future. and now going back from anywhere will always mean 'to delhi'

stats lec cartoon

history and conflict

i thought here i would only see people who loved economics. instead i come upon this large number who are doing it cos its a way to get rich! back home those would have filled up MBA schools but here an economist is different. and so there are these people who understand nuts about the beauty of economics, and are therefore killing themselves over it. for what? money!!! and in the process they hold the teachers responsible for making their lives hell. and its very apparent that those teachers love their subject. i'm clearly biased here. and i do not fit in.

Frost - 'Departmental'

an ant on the tablecloth
ran into a dormant moth
of many times his size.
he showed not the least surprise.
his business wasn't with such.
he gave it scarcely a touch,
and was off on his duty run.
yet if he encountered one
of the hive's enquiry squad
whose work is to find out God
and the nature of time and space,
he would put him onto the case.
ants are a curious race;
one crossing with hurried tread
the body of one of their dead
isn't given a moment's arrest-
seems not even impressed.
but he no doubt reports to any
with whom he crosses antennae,
and they no doubt report
to the higher up at court.
then word goes forth in Formic:
"Death's come to Jerry McCormic,
our selfless forager Jerry.
will the special Janizary
whose office it is to bury
the dead of the commissary
go bring him home to his people.
lay him in state in sepal.
wrap him for shroud in a petal.
embalm him with ichor of nettle.
this is the word of your Queen."
and presently on the scene
appears a solemn mortician;
and taking formal position
with feelers calmly atwiddle,
seizes the dead by the middle,
and heaving him high in the air,
carries him out of there.
no one stands round to stare.
it is nobody's affair.

it couldn't be called ungentle.
but how thoroughly departmental.

waiting for a poem to rise in my heart. its welling up within. like that final moment when you expect it anytime. but noone ever said that the final moment can sometimes last ages. if only the sun stayed golden on my cheeks and the wind stopped howling. it may yet come. even the waiting is beautiful

a person's room has a spirit and character of its own. whether its in north campus, or an audience to the daily clatter of neighbourhood kannadiga life, or overlooking a dark back-lane between lil flats in a typical vk block, or in the surprising greenery in cluttered south delhi; i am carrying along this bodyless spirit with me. give it some time, and the essential clothing it begs you for, and so what if white blinds replace the indian curtains it loves; the room will breathe the same. more often than not i forget how much the outside world has changed, it feels so - the same. its as if i carried it with me in one of the 23kg boxes allowed and just put it down here. so what if this mattress cost me 10 times more and the wood is donated and scratched. it travels over time, back and forth in the past, while i daydream. and i am in all of those rooms at once

its nice to come back home early from work once in a while. to leave at 5:30 dot. so the roads are empty and i zoom past. except the bad flyover which makes my car jump like it was a toy. somthing in my body feels unhealthy whenever my car jumps over those potholes or when it makes extra sounds. like this once when my car ac was tripping every two minutes when halted, and my heart actually came to my throat with every trip. that for two days and i was in a frenzy, enough to take papa with me to samara hyundai, out of this world in okhla industrial area. seemed like we were traveling to a village. this, when papa hasnt been to the car servicier in ages, ravi always takes it. (dont interrupt by asking who ravi is now). so in the waiting room there, was a tv and this woman was watching a pathetically sadistic south indian movie dubbed in hindi called 'lok parlok'. with some evil woman's spirit entering different forms of life or nothingness, and plotting to finish off a couple cos the guy hadnt married her and she had killed herself in the fire. now if someone just stands in a fire and doesnt scream, and dies without becoming a naked spectacle first, thats quite something. anyway so the movie was full of huge scary eyes and screams and noises and fat bodies. i totally loathed it. and wanted to change the channel but no, the woman said it was coming to an end. which was an utter lie. and papa who was making faces (and comments) at the woman also started watching it. i was in fact having to maintain almost constant eye contact with him to get him off it. anyway i did manage to change it to dd news as soon as resolution got bad (pretending i was trying to correct it) and then papa managed to get more masala news. and the next hf n hr we must have heard the word 'bahubali' more than 15 times. that was the day after the election result. for once i did not get mad at the melodrama of the media.

anyway so coming back home early. with serious intentions of working at home once the comfortable shorts were on and the tummy had had an extra luxury of crapping in the evening. but now the word file lies forgotten in my pendrive and i've wasted half n hr again on facebook. looking at ppl's photos. even though circumstances plotted against my 'id' with my 'ego' with mtnl giving way just when desired. but i guess it finally bowed down in front of my strong intentions.

oh btw i had to drive backwards almost 100mts cos two approaches to my house within my colony were blocked by a truck each and when i finally managed to get front driving back again i had to get down and remove this extra huge pole blocking the road next to something dug up. and then put it back again thinking whether a car could trip over it like ppl do over ropes.

poetry, psychology and economics

"Had I been less definitely determined to start working, I might have made an effort to begin right away. But because my resolve was absolute and, within twenty-four hours, in the empty frames of the next day where everything fit so well since I was not yet there, my good resolutions would easily be accomplished, it was better not to choose an evening where I was ill disposed for a beginning to which, alas! the following days would turn out to be no more propitious."

that's proust on procrastination through tirole on a self-confidence model. sometimes only a long sentence can express things accurately.

punchline

two college friends on gchat after years bothered to actually talk beyond a hi -

friend 1: how u doing married n all
friend 2: great re
having fun here in dubai
joined a mkt research firm
doing some work....dying to get back home...nice place dubai
for youngsters
like mumbai
lots of short drives around the emirate...
lots of weekend trips....discs...pubs....malls...big buildings
jus like aamchi mumbai :)
friend 1: :)
v good
friend 2: and full on masti coz no more deadlines or late night worries...
coz im married na...have a male escort 24/7
lol